JINHA

WAN - A village in the largely Kurdish province of Van bid farewell to YPJ fighter Ceylan Öztoktaş in a funeral ceremony yesterday.

Women bore Ceylan's coffin on their shoulders to the village cemetery in Dağören village, in the Muradiye district of Van province. The ceremony was decorated the flags of Kurdish fighting organizations, posters of Ceylan Öztoktaş and posters of the jailed Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan. Van's parliamentary representative Tuğba Hezer attended the ceremony.

Ceylan (nom de guerre Amara Agit) had joined the YPJ, the women's defense force defending the revolution in the Rojava autonomous region of Syria. She died in a clash with Daesh gang members in a village near the city of Kobanê, the besieged city in Rojava.

"Today we put yet another life under the ground," said Kevê Işık, a member of the women's anti-war organization the Peace Mothers Assembly, speaking at the funeral and calling for Kurds to unite around those who lost their lives in the struggle for freedom.

(va/mg/cm)